K.R.Prior 1932 - 2020

K. R. Prior was born in England in 1932 and grew up in Maidstone. He earned a B. A. in French at University College London, and made his living teaching French in London and later in Canada, where he earned a Ph. D. for a thesis on Jean Giraudoux’s novel La Menteuse, after having discovered the larger half of this work, which had been thought to be unfinished.

In 1997, after retiring, he began to write and translate poetry, and came to specialise in discovery and development of new techniques, including the six-four line, four-two line, four-syllable line, P. K. Page’s three-two line (Fibonacci metre), the collage, and the use of the forms of classical music to structure a poem or poems ( e.g. sonata forms as in Visions, with exposition, development, recapitulation and coda ).

Many moons ago, while sitting on a bench drinking in the beauty of the oceanic shoreline in Victoria, B.C., a stranger arrived and, sitting down beside me, we felt a familiar poetic spell encircling us. Thus began our platonic relationship, which wove an intricate tapestry through a period of 25 years.

To me, Roy Prior’s poetry is heraldic … such a vast variety of colour and sounds, and of moods, where Beauty, Despair, Wit, Irony, Cynicism, and Passion intertwine.

The day that we first met, I had been reading a volume of the great Canadian poet, P.K. Page, and after sharing it with Roy, he became enamoured of her unique and variable rhythm, bearing a numerical count of rare quality. Upon sharing his ideas with P.K. Page, they exchanged several letters and Roy was eventually invited to give a few public readings of her works.

Through the brilliance of his mind and the passion of his voice, he indeed shifted worlds for me.

He continues to do so through the powers of memory, where his sound ever sings, through Timeless Awakenings.